


Over the Valley, Silently

by Pyrosane



Category: Football RPF
Genre: FC Barcelona, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-09
Updated: 2015-06-09
Packaged: 2018-04-03 15:55:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4106578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pyrosane/pseuds/Pyrosane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The sun keeps setting and they've still got so much left to not talk about.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Over the Valley, Silently

1.

The mountain is clean.

On the outskirts of Terrassa, there is a valley. It frames the yawning horizon, bringing the sky to a duskened haze of mulberry and crimson, glowing before the final setting of the sun. The world around Andrés burns like a stoked fire, or a bruise, depending on how he feels on this strange earth, unturned by his feet and his head and his heart, heavy and burdened and slow-moving.

Before him, the grass sways. There are dandelions and daisies abound on this particular patch of cachéd valley, where his breaths feel saturated with color. Andrés makes sure to tread softly. There is too much he has bothered.

Like those of any other valley, this valley’s hips climb into mountains, breaking from the dirt to crawl towards the sun. They reach, but they cannot quite obtain, and Andrés wonders how it came to be that he has begun seeing himself in these monstrous hills. Only, mountains never move and Xavi promised he wouldn’t either, but he did. Will. Either way, Xavi broke like a branch from an ancient tree - with hesitation at first, and then unnoticeably. So perhaps broke is not the right word; rather, Xavi slipped after some thought.

2.

The mountain is clean.

Andrés is already waiting at the center of the valley the way Xavi told him to. Xavi arrives from behind and doesn’t tell Andrés that he was late to Andrés but not to the valley because as the sun went down, Xavi watched Andrés pass from man to silhouette, obscuring a sinking star with nothing but his narrow frame. The edges of Andrés’ body blurs with the stubborn light but it never melts away. As it is, no light could pass through Andrés, not even that of the sun. Andrés doesn’t budge and Xavi leaves the spectacle with one thought in mind: Andrés is a titan trapped in a boy, built to conquer.

“The light dies with you,” is all Xavi says, and Andrés nods like he understands.

They stand in silence for a moment, watching as the sky mends itself into a bruise wheel on canvas, painted with shades of human hurt. Why are their hearts so heavy?

“So it must die with you too, then,” Andrés finally says. Xavi looks at him in question, in concern. Andrés doesn’t smile. “Did you think I was joking when I said you’re the torch, and I’m simply the bearer?”

3.

The mountain is clean.

The day is clear, too. Andrés and Xavi hike further up the mountain on their right of the valley in the disappearing sunlight. Andrés has mushrooms in his pockets. Xavi has a special sack for his own mushrooms, and he offers to put the senderillas and the níscalos that Andrés collected with his delicate finding of campos, but Andrés refuses. _no, they’re mine. two separate mushroom piles for two people who have finally become separate as well._

Xavi stares at Andrés in wide-eyed hurt, but the two move on.

4.

The mountain's dirt has been turned by the maestro and the illusionista.

However, the trees overhead and the grass underfoot do not sing their praises, so they remain, simply, Xavier Hernández and Andrés Iniesta. The wild audience of the valley and its mountains have no use for their glory. 

They trek back down the slope, smelling strongly of the earth and of the trees, rustic and native to these parts. At the foot of the mountain, where the mountain’s edge toes into the valley’s ends, they run without a ball between their feet. They run unfettered in this never-ending landscape, their breaths open and deafening without the roars of a crowd to silence them. Xavi thinks of a life spent building such moments with Andrés, and how he will or won’t manage to remember them all in the passing of time. After all, they are only human.

Xavi watches as Andrés runs from man to boyhood, heading straight for the already-set sun, or towards La Masia, or both, depending on what Andrés is looking to recall. If Andrés is looking to recall bunching Xavi’s shirt up in trembling fingers for the first time as they embraced, flattened on the grass by a pile of bodies, laughing and crying and crying and crying, it must surely be both.

But as always, Xavi runs after Andrés.

 ****  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Xavi's leaving and I feel devastated, so I wrote this terrible piece. That, and Andrés Iniesta is mi padre but I have absolutely no mercy on the poor guy's heart, bless his soul.


End file.
